1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for displaying guide lines (partition) which show a storage state of documents divided by contents in, for example, an electronic filing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
First, terms used in this specification and claims are explained as follows.
(A) Guide line: In a filing system to which the present invention is applied, documents to be managed are classified in accordance with a classification system, in which a classified border and partition are inserted. When the classification state is displayed on the screen of, e.g., a cathode ray tube, the border line corresponding to the partition is called a "guide line".
(B) Guide: A domain between guide lines is called a "guide" or "guide domain". The guide domain is used when the area of the guide is emphasized.
(C) Rank: A group of documents classified by a partition are referred to by "rank", e.g., 1 to 10 in accordance with the respective number of documents.
(D) Mouse: A mouse is an input device in a data processing system. By the operation thereof, a display on the display screen is controlled.
Generally, in a filing system a plurality of documents are classified and stored, e.g., in a tree configuration in accordance with the contents, and thus the selection and retrieval of the necessary documents can be easily effected.
Also, in an electronic filing system, it has been considered that a display screen be partitioned by guide lines in accordance with the kind of documents concerned to give a feeling similar to files stored in a drawer.
Selecting of a guide or folder is accomplished by pushing the left side key on a mouse in the system. An inhibit operation of the selected folder is executed by pushing the right key on the mouse, the folder being the lowest hierarchical classification.
On the display screen, the selected folder is shown by inverted letters in black and white. The guide structure is a hierarchical structure, and therefore, when all the guides belonging to a particular higher guide are selected, the higher guide is also selected and the expression thereof is executed by the inverted letters in black and white. The total number of documents belonging to the folder shown by inversion is displayed on the display screen. The total number of documents is renewed in accordance with the mouse operation simultaneously with a renewal of the display.
In the above related art, there is a problem that a number of documents belonging to a folder containing several documents cannot be found immediately.